Tag: debussy

Osorio makes an impressive entry in Northwestern’s Skyline Piano Artist Series

On By Sam JacobsonIn chicagoLeave a comment

Jorge Federico Osorio, piano
Mary B. Galvin Recital Hall
Evanston, IL
April 1, 2017

Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 14 in C sharp minor, Op. 27 No. 2, Moonlight
Schubert: Piano Sonata No. 20 in A major, D959
Debussy: Préludes, Book II

Encores:
Granados: Andaluza, No. 5 from Danzas españolas, Op. 37
Granados: Orientale, No. 2 from Danzas españolas, Op. 37

For piano enthusiasts, the Skyline Piano Artist Series at Northwestern, now in its second season, has become an essential complement to the Sunday afternoon recitals downtown at Symphony Center.  The venue of choice for the series is the recently built Galvin Recital Hall, one of Chicagoland’s most striking concert spaces, an intimate setting boasting stellar acoustics and stunning views of Lake Michigan and the distant Chicago skyline.  Chicago-based pianist Jorge Federico Osorio made a welcome appearance and offered a weighty program of Beethoven, Schubert, and Debussy.

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Jorge Federico Osorio, photo credit Todd Rosenberg
Beethoven’s ever-popular Moonlight sonata opened, the lights of the city skyline reflecting on the water making a fitting visual backdrop, though it should be remembered that the work’s ubiquitous sobriquet didn’t originate with the composer.  Under Osorio’s hands, the first movement was given a luminous, rippling effect, and treated almost like a nocturne.  The buoyant second movement served as a light interlude to the stormy finale.  In this impressive outpouring, Osorio mined the emotional depths of Beethoven’s explosive psyche; a few minor technical mishaps did little to detract from the drama.

In change from the order on the printed program, Osorio proceeded with Schubert’s late, great A major piano sonata (D959) to juxtapose the two epochal Viennese sonatas, both of which redefined the genre.  The grandeur of the capacious opening movement had an ineffable Schubertian grace, and Osorio opted for the lengthy repeat of the exposition.  A thoughtful sense of narrative guided the pianist in the labyrinths of the development, and its introspection was maintained through the mysterious, arpeggiated coda.  The Andantino had the lyricism of a song without words, and built to menacing outbursts in the strikingly contrasting middle section, while the scherzo danced in its mercurial drama, complemented by an especially lovely trio.  In the finale, the main theme’s blissfulness belied a dramatic potential which Osorio was keen to explore, and the movement harked back to the sonata’s declamatory opening in its concluding moments.

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The dramatic setting of the Galvin Recital Hall
The second half was devoted to Debussy’s substantial second book of twelve preludes, a panoply of pianistic watercolors requiring a formidable technique.  Brouillards was given a limpid reading, the coloristic washes of sound suggesting the titular mists.  Contrast was soon to be had in the barren Feuilles mortes, and Osorio struck an ideal balance between the fiery and the sensuous in the faux-Spanish La puerta del Vino.  The quicksilver Les fées sont d’exquises danseuses was fantasy-like, and the resonant bells of a distant cathedral were suggested in Bruyères.  Osorio imbued Général Lavine – eccentric with its requisite eccentricity, one of Debussy’s rambunctious appropriations of the American cakewalk and ragtime music (and incidentally, this concert occurred on the 100th anniversary of Scott Joplin’s death).

The moonlight shimmered in La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune, and how apt it was given this prelude and the Beethoven sonata that concertgoers would leave the hall to the sight of a beautiful crescent moon.  Ondine was perhaps the most impressionistic of the set in its fantastical evocation of the titular water sprite.  The bombast of Hommage à S. Pickwick Esq. P.P.M.P.C. was countered by Canope, which for Osorio was a study in the beauty and purity of tone.  While Les tierces alternées sounds like the name of a dry Czerny etude, here the alternating thirds were used for solid musical purposes rather than mere technique.  The Préludes concluded with the unrelenting technical tour de force that is Feux d’artifice, and Osorio delivered it with panache and élan.

No Osorio recital would be complete without music from the Spanish speaking world, and the two Granados encores filled the gap.  Both were extracted from the 12 Danzas españolas: a jaunty “Andaluza”, fittingly paired with the touchingly lyrical “Orientale”.

Hamelin explores the piano sonata in commanding Cleveland recital

On By Sam JacobsonIn clevelandLeave a comment

Marc-André Hamelin, piano
Gartner Auditorium
Cleveland Museum of Art
Cleveland, OH
March 21, 2017

Haydn: Piano Sonata in C Major, Hob. XVI:48
Feinberg: Piano Sonata No. 1 in A major, Op. 1
Feinberg: Piano Sonata No. 2 in A minor, Op. 2
Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 23 in F minor, Op. 57, Appassionata
Scriabin: Piano Sonata No. 7, Op. 64, Messe blanche
Chopin: Piano Sonata No. 2 in B flat minor, Op. 35

Encore:
Debussy: Reflets dans l’eau, No. 1 from Images, Book I

Marc-André Hamelin has built much of his reputation on fearless exploration of the byways of the piano repertoire, and his recital at the Cleveland Museum of Art – presented by the Cleveland International Piano Competition – was no exception, juxtaposing the familiar with the obscure.  All the works on the program bore the title “piano sonata”, although none adhered very closely to the standard model of the form, a true testament to the medium’s protean potential.  Hamelin delivered the program with his signature peerless technique, yet this was far from an evening of vapid virtuosity, but one of probing artistic discovery.

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Marc-André Hamelin, photo credit Rachel Papo
The survey of piano sonatas appropriately began with Haydn, in the two movement C major sonata, Hob. XVI:48.  Given Hamelin’s association with the fingerbusting works of the 19th– and 20th-century, Hamelin and Haydn might sound like an unnatural fit, but as he as shown in his extensive recordings of the composer’s sonatas for Hyperion, it’s an inspired coupling to be sure.  From the onset, the performance was marked by deftly nuanced articulation and crisp ornamentation.  There were sporadic moments when matters felt a bit heavy-handed which lesser pedaling perhaps could have ameliorated, but overall this was a study in precision, replete with minor key excursions that foreshadowed Beethoven, and the all too brief finale exuded joie de vivre.

Certified rarities followed, the first two piano sonatas of the Russian composer and pianist Samuil Feinberg.  His cycle of twelve piano sonatas is a remarkable achievement, unjustly neglected, and Hamelin is rumored to be recording them.  These two sonatas, in A major and minor respectively, were of a similar aesthetic, the consecutive opuses hardly demonstrating Feinberg’s eventual compositional developments (both dating from 1915; the final sonata dates from 1962), yet Hamelin presented them with a singular intensity and an unflinching commitment to this little-known music.

The First Sonata was of a brooding Romanticism, while the dense textures would have sounded murky in lesser hands, Hamelin achieved a lucid clarity of voices, and delineated a clear trajectory in spite of the composer’s tendency to meander.  A touchingly lyrical melody characterized the Second Sonata, and a highpoint came in its dramatically cascading climax.

Beethoven’s mighty Appassionata is a recent addition to Hamelin’s concert repertoire; I’ve been eager to hear his take on this durable work, and he certainly didn’t disappoint.  The opening movement built to massive climaxes that carefully avoided bombast.  There was much-needed repose in the slow movement, enhanced by the adroitly voiced chordal melody, while the finale had an unrelenting nervous energy in its breathless race to the tragic end, given at a dangerously brisk tempo.

One of Hamelin’s first recordings of his long and fruitful association with Hyperion was of the complete Scriabin piano sonatas; the arresting Seventh Sonata is a work that has been in his fingers for a very long time.  Explosive and mercurial, the sonata proceeded with inevitability towards the trilling, mystical ending, shrouded in enigma.

Chopin’s B-flat minor sonata concluded the program, and in the passionate first movement Hamelin drew out a fluid melody over an undulating accompaniment.  He eschewed the repeat of the exposition, although in this case I would suggest the repeat is a wise interpretative choice given the movement’s proportions.  There was a menacing determination in the scherzo, while its middle section was indulgent in sumptuous melody, quintessentially Chopinesque.

No empty sentimentality was to be had in the tragic heights of the famous funeral march, and Hamelin had a velvet touch in the contrasting lyrical section.  His utter and absolute command of the keyboard was on full display in the moto perpetuum finale, yet phrases were keenly shaped to make the sonata’s revolutionary ending more than mere volleys of notes.

Hamelin obliged the modest but enthusiastic audience with an encore in Debussy’s Reflets dans l’eau, shimmering and liquescent.